Wednesday, March 8, 2017

MA Khan : Islam and the Clash of Civilizations

Islam and the Clash of Civilizations

Challenging
Nobel Laureate Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 thesis that with the fall the
Marxist Communism, the world will converge towards nonconflictual
liberal-democracy as its final destiny, Samuel Huntington proposed
his Civilization Clash theory in 1993. Contradicting Fukuyama’s
optimism of a more peaceful world-civilization ahead, Huntington
emphasized that conflicts in the world were not over, but future
conflicts will be fought along civilizational fault-lines over
cultural or religious differences, not between states over
ideological (political) or economic reasons. “The clash of
civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between
civilizations will be the battle lines of the future,” he predicted.
Huntington identified eight major civilizations—Indian, Chinese,
Asian, Islamic, and Western etc.—and emphasized that instead of
converging towards universal liberalism globally, human
consciousness within these civilizations is accentuating; people are
becoming increasingly parochial and conscious of their cultural,
religious or civilizational values and differences.
Huntington
analyzed how these civilizations would likely interplay in reshaping
the emerging world-order. His thesis gets significant space for
Islamic resurgence, simply because, in recent decades, religious
revivalism in an intolerant and violent form amongst Muslims much
outweighs the rejuvenation of civilizational or religious
consciousness amongst other peoples.
On the ongoing civilizational
clash of Islam with the rest of humanity, Huntington wrote: “The
overwhelming majority of fault line conflicts, however, have taken
place along the boundary lopping across Eurasia and Africa that
separates Muslims from non-Muslims”. He added: “wherever one looks
along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably
with their neighbors.” Islam has “Bloody Borders”, he asserted.
His analysis vis-à-vis Islam in his thesis has become a bone of
contention; he came under intense attacks over this from his
critics, led by Edward Said.
One likes it or not, Huntington’s
thesis is already becoming a reality. Even the followers of Hinduism
and Buddhism—both apolitical and pacifist creeds in principle and
historically—are becoming increasingly jingoistic, political and
even militant. There have been attacks on Christians and churches by
Hindus in India and Buddhists in Sri Lanka in recent years. This
trend, in all likelihood, would heighten over coming decades.
Despite the denials of his critics, Huntington’s analysis regarding
Islam’s clash with its neighbors is based on undeniable ground
reality, which has greatly heightened since his theory was proposed
in 1993, most prominently after the 9-11 attacks.
A cardinal fact
that one may miss in Huntington’s book is that the civilizational
clash of Islam is not new; it is as old as Islam itself: fourteen
centuries old. Islam was founded by Prophet Muhammad as a
“totalitarian and globalist creed” in the 7th-century Arabia at the
cost of his non-Muslim neighbors: Pagans, Jews and Christians. The
Prophet himself had cleansed Arabia of the Pagans. On his deathbed
(632), he had ordered his followers to cleanse Arabia of remaining
few Jews and Christians, whom he had allowed to live as ignominious
dhimmi subjects in peripheral areas. The second caliph Omar (d. 644)
put Muhammad’s last wish to action, denuding Arabia of non-Muslims.
He expelled the Jews of Khaybar in 638, for example.
The clash of
“Islam versus the rest of humanity”, initiated by Prophet Muhammad
at its founding, was widened against all humanity and perpetuated by
Muslims over the centuries. It could not be otherwise, because Islam
was born in Arabia as Islamic God Allah’s master-plan, His
politico-military tool, for creating a global Islamic state by
making Muslims His “agent and inheritor of the earth” [Quran 6:165]
and promising to make Islam victorious over all peoples and places
[Quran 8:39]. Since then, Muslims, including its classical scholars,
have divided the humanity into two houses, two civilizations: Dar
al-Islam (House of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (House of War).
Islam’s central mission over the centuries has been to turn the
non-Muslim Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam through Jihadi wars to
realize Allah’s global imperial dream. Classical Islamic literature
is very candid about this. And Islam’s history reflects exactly
that. Islam has achieved stunning success in this mission. Where is
the great pre-Islamic civilization of Coptic-Paganic Egypt,
Zoroastrian Persia, Eastern Christianity of West Asia, Paganic-Animist
North Africa, where Islam reached quite early by the sword. They
have all vanished. Estimated 120 million human lives were lost to
Islamic swords in Africa and 80 million in India. Some 60 million
Christians and millions of Buddhists also perished. Readers may
consult my just-released book,
Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and
Slavery, in order the grasp the whole picture of Islam’s
historical and ongoing clash with the rest of humanity.
It should
be pointed that Judaism and Christianity had their own problem. If
the account of the Old Testament is to be believed, at the founding
of Judaism, Moses led his enslaved, oppressed Hebrew people out of
Egypt to Israel, which was to become their G’d-given homeland; the
indigenous people there suffered. But Judaism’s clash with its
neighbours theoretically ended there; it was not supposed to spread
out of Israel. In reality, they soon became victim of harrowing
persecution at their very homeland; their right to live there has
been under constant threat, which continues today. Most of all, they
have mended their ways: they live in complete harmony with people of
all faiths: from India to North America.
Christianity had problems
somewhat similar to Islam’s: it dreamt of taking over the world
through the instruments of force until the days of Renaissance. Then
came the Age Enlightenment, which pushed Christianity out of
politics. It has distanced itself from political spheres and
violence for long.
The same cannot be said of Islam. It has
changed little from what it set out to be at its birth. Its clash
with global humanity in its age-old violent form continues to this
day. Muslims continue to use the instrument of violence and
intimidation. The conflicts in Kashmir, Mindanao, Southern Thailand,
the Balkans, Chechnya and parts of Africa, plus the violent
campaigns of Islamist Al-Qaeda and like-minded terror groups, are a
continuation of that. The same applies to Muslim immigrants’ clash
with their host societies in the West: their refusal to integrate,
open disobedience to respect Western laws and persistent efforts to
introduce Islamic laws even in public spheres—social, political and
financial.
One agrees with Huntington or not, the clash of Islam
with the rest of humanity, amongst his theorized conflicts amongst
various civilizations, is obviously in the act and will undoubtedly
intensify in coming decades. Whilst achieving stunning success in
its clash with greater humanity over the past 14 centuries, Islam is
most firmly placed than ever to finish off the job—that is, take
over world and institute the governance of the Quran and prophetic
tradition—the ultimate ambition, it was born to accomplish.
===============http://www.islam-watch.org/MA_Khan/Islam-and-Clash-of-Civilizations.htm

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